The Williams Institute

This book chapter examines sexual orientation and discrimination experienced by transgender people, using data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. This study explores how respondents to the NTDS identified their sexual orientation, how those responses differ based on demographic variables (e.g. age, race, and gender), and how respondents’ experiences of discrimination and outcomes differ based on sexual orientation. The study finds that only 22% of transgender respondents identified as heterosexual or straight, and that transgender respondents who identify as sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual or a different sexual minority) experience a greater likelihood than straight respondents of encountering some forms of discrimination at work, at school or in public.

This chapter appears in Trans Studies: The Challenge to Hetero/Homo Normativities, an interdisciplinary essay collection edited by Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Sarah Tobias on transgender scholarship and public policy. Trans Studies is available for purchase in print or as an ebook from Rutgers University Press.